


Let My Baby Stay

by ivyleaguenerd



Category: Men’s Hockey RPF
Genre: Auston is disappointed, Author Doesn’t Know How To Tag, Coming Out, Homophobia Mentioned, Homophobic Slurs, M/M, Mitch and Auston face homophobia, Mitch is angry, from the infamous Mike Babs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:13:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26080060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivyleaguenerd/pseuds/ivyleaguenerd
Summary: Inspired by Mac DeMarco’s ‘Let My Baby Stay’, off of Salad Days.Auston and Mitch face the consequences and pleasures of what it’s like to come out - as Mitch’s drunk self had done so at the bar the previous evening.(also big shoutout to my dude jules for helping beta this! i appreciate you so highly my pal :)
Relationships: Mitch Marner/Auston Matthews
Comments: 2
Kudos: 37





	Let My Baby Stay

Auston sighed as he received yet another call from a member of their team, asking about what the situation was. Mitch was leaning his hip against the countertop in the kitchen, biting his fingernail right off of his thumb to the crease. He was going to take the whole damn thing off by the end of the night, and if the evening continued down the same path, it was going to be a rough ride. 

“He’s happy with me, and I’m happy with him. We’re happy living with one another," Auston defended. "And I don’t really care what the media says about our game and lives being affected by it.”

Mitch glanced up to try to figure out who it was he was having to play defense against now. All of the team had been calling them non-stop tonight, and some of it was assuring, but a massive portion of the calls were regarding the press and their commentary on the relationship status that they’d self released. 

“Auston, are you sure that this won’t cause a distraction in the locker room?” JT pried, and Auston sighed. 

“Bye, have a very nice evening.” Auston hung up, and he switched his phone off, plugged it into the charger, and swiped Mitch’s phone to do the same. 

“What do you say we go and relax now, huh?” Auston offered, and he held a hand out to Mitch for him to grasp. 

“Yeah... that sounds.. that sounds perfect, honestly.” Mitch nodded, sighing between the sentence to just let himself sit on the situation another moment longer. “Who was that?” Mitch had to ask, it’d just hurt him worse to find out in the arena. 

“That was surprisingly JT,” Auston sighed, and pulled Mitch close to his chest to embrace him tightly. Auston wrapped his arms comfortably around Mitch, and rubbed small circles on his back. 

Both Auston and Mitch had some sort of puffiness to their eyes, the stress of the evening had really done them in. Crying, laughing hysterically in what felt like insanity, rubbing away the insanity of others, vomiting, they may have really experienced it all in one run. 

“If I’d known- if drunk me had warned sober me about that stupid post, I honestly think we’d be handling this way better right now,” Mitch slurred against Auston’s chest, and tilted his head up to look at Auston’s reaction. 

Auston gave a gentle chuckle before kissing Mitch’s forehead and running a hand through his soft hair. 

“I think neither drunk, high, or sober Mitch could have prepared any form of Mitch to exist. Same goes for drunk or high Auston.” Auston gave him a small smile, and leaned his lips to Mitch’s forehead and held them there. He was just admiring the moment, and appreciating the ability he had to hold his boyfriend comfortably in their living room. 

“Like, how did drunk me even assume that it was appropriate to post that?” Mitch muttered and dragged his lip through his teeth for a moment before clearing his throat. “The post itself is honestly one of my best pieces of literature, a finite sample of my literary knowledge,” Mitch joked a bit, and giggled at his own joke. 

Auston giggled too, shifting his head to that his cheek was pressed against Mitch’s forehead. 

“I think we can give it one more read before we go lay down, a good laugh, right?” Auston suggested, and looked down at Mitch to get his clearance. 

Mitch, with a bright smile and nod, stepped towards their computer. First thing he did was shut his ringer and notification board off entirely. Then he opened Twitter, and scrolled until he figured out how to pull up his own page. 

“Drunk Mitch has balls, he made it his pinned tweet,” Auston poked fun already, just seeing the tweet pop up under pinned. 

“I know, I wish I lived in drunk Mitch’s shoes more often. A real risk taker, a ballsy man. I’m taking drunk Mitch to the playoffs for sure,” Mitch remarked in return, it was an honest fact and the evidence sat before them to prove it. 

“You wanna read it, or should I? Who’s fake drunk voice is better?” Auston gave the option, but secretly wanted Mitch to do it. It was Mitch’s drunk coming out post anyways. 

“I got it.” Mitch smiled again, kissing Auston’s cheek in response and licking his lips before clearing his throat again. “So basically; I’m not 11, I’m 12 so shut fucking up. This press release states that besides kissing my gay ass, I’m gay, and I’m so happy about it,” Mitch began, and he couldn’t help but laugh at the over usage of cuss words and sass that his drunk self had. 

“The girl who’s in the- that made the ‘I’m eleven so shut the fuck up’ vine honestly needs to get into your DM’s already because she should sue for that one.” Auston laughed a bit at his own honesty, and he wrapped his arms around Mitch’s upper chest and neck as he sat to read the tweet alongside the laptop. 

“It continues; I’m dating someone. Somebody you can tell who it is, and somebody who’s a guy, who happens to have a penis and all because you have to know now, I just said I was gay,” Mitch read, and he rubbed at his eyes as they welled up of tears again. The tears weren’t sad, he was just laughing so hard that it was damn near impossible to avoid tearing up from laughing. 

“I follow up with; He does use a rubber because safe sex is super special and bad to mess with and then I know I get checked all the time but maybe we all can donate to HIV and AIDS foundations till we eventually won’t have to.” Mitch shook his head, and bit his lip before continuing. “To conclude; If me being with Auston is a problem for you, keep it to yourself. I’m not saying ya gotta like it. I do, he does, so wholeheartedly eat my fuckin’ shorts if you think otherwise cause I do not care.” 

Auston cackled at the ‘eat my shorts’ bit, and Mitch was laughing so hard that he was barely able to finish reading the sentence. They took a moment to laugh, Auston slamming his fist into his leg and Mitch whimpering out through his actual tears of laughter. That’s one way to come out, an instagram post you wrote while you were drunk, that you posted and pinned to your story. 

“Okay, but can we talk about-- can we talk about the fuckin’-- the fact that Drunk Mitch added a link to donate, can we please talk about it?” Auston cackled, and Mitch laughed even harder just thinking about it again. 

“Drunk Mitch is the biggest advocate,” Mitch began, and he snickered at himself. “He fights for gay rights and people who suffer AIDS in one post, I love Drunk Mitch!” Mitch nodded and fistbumped Auston, who high fived Mitch back. 

Mitch’s phone started buzzing and it was the buzz pattern he set for when Babs called. Auston rushed to the phone, and held it out to Mitch. 

“This isn’t gonna be good, nor easy,” Auston mumbled, and Mitch sighed. Why did the happiness have to end so shortly? 

“Do I.. Do I really have to?” Mitch whispered, tracing his fingertips along his bottom lip and grabbed the phone and held it near his thighs in his lap. 

“Yeah. Yeah, unfortunately, you aren’t me so you can’t, and it sucks, but y'know.” Auston shook his head a little, and rubbed at his forehead to try to erase the concern. 

Mitch swiped the bottom of the screen to answer the call, and put the phone on speaker. He gave a look to Auston and Auston gave a small nod to signal that it was totally fine that he put it on speaker for both to endure. 

“Uhm, hello?” Mitch coughed out, nervous to have the earful he expected. 

“Mitchell Marner, you are absolutely not telling me I saw what I did from press today,” Babcock growled out, and Mitch licked his bottom lip before beginning to interrupt. 

“Michael Babcock, as I have respected you during my entire career, you should do the same for me and my colleague Auston, as we both are homosexuals, proud of it and ready to stop hiding it,” Mitch bravely spoke, although the shudder and shake in his voice was blatantly audible to Auston’s ears and likely for Babcock. 

“Mitch, you are not gay!” Babcock shouted, as soon as Mitch’s voice dwindled to the end of his statement. 

“But sir, I absolutely am! There’s nothing you can--“ Mitch got cut off rudely, and Auston’s face fell flat as he came to the conclusion that nothing beneficial nor meaningful was going to come out of this phone call conversation. 

“Mitchell Marner, you are not going to be the first homosexual male professional athlete, you are not going to carry this stigmatized sexual gender fuck-whatever, you are not going to make a mockery of how hard I’ve tried to get you to the top and you are not going to unravel the work I’ve done among the team! It is simply not going to happen, not today, not tomorrow, not last night, absolutely not! Do you understand me?! Do you?!” 

Babcock was full on yelling, and Mitch had to take moment to figure out where Babcock could have been to accomplish this level of conversation. He must’ve been alone, or he simply didn’t care. Either way, Mitch’s face dropped and he was beginning to show signs of disgust. His ears turned red, bright red and they were hot to the touch. The blood rushed to his cheeks and ears when he was pissed. Some players took it as a blush, and would mock him, but it would only make it worse because he was absolutely infuriated by then. 

“You can’t decide what I am and what I’m not! You don’t get that right! I absolutely did not sign anything that agrees with that!” Mitch fought, like he was practically digging himself out of a pit of quicksand. 

Auston dropped his hands to his sides, and sat down on the couch behind the desk setup that Mitch sat at. He put his head in his hands, and he just hid his face. It was disappointing, disgusting, depressing; he could go on for years. Sadly this phone call from Babcock was expected to be this devastating. 

“Mitch, you signed your entire life away to this game and you are a fucking moron for thinking I’ll let you ruin your public appearance like this! You and Auston, a bucket of idiots! It’s a fucking shit show! You’re a load of clowns, for doing this to me, to the team!” Babcock rambled on, just furthering Mitch’s pure hatred and deeply wounding the man. “You’re just a kid, you’re only twenty-one! You’d be a senior in college if it wasn’t for me, and here you are, ruining all chances of even getting into a college if I drop your ass on the concrete for this fucking shit show!” Babcock was twisting the knife; figuring that maybe by hurting Mitch, he’d put an end to the reality he wasn’t planning on facing. 

“Call me when you wanna drop me on my ass. Shoot me an email, text my mom, I don’t care. Just give me a warning. Have a great evening, and eat a delightful dinner.” Mitch wrapped that up, slamming the brakes on that whole operation. He hung up immediately after, not giving Babcock the chance to continue on.

“Baby?” Mitch whispered, and he sunk into his own lap as well. 

“Yeah, Mitchy?” Auston responded immediately, and stood from the couch. 

“Can I.. Can I just have a hug, please?” Mitch requested, and Auston embraced his boy like he had never done so before. He wrapped his arms tightly around Mitch, rubbing his back and kissing the top of his head so gently for the while that the hug was needed. 

Until Mitch looked up, at least. 

“Auston, I-I still love you, and I still wanna love you, and, and, and I’ll take rotten tomatoes for you, y'know?” Mitch began, and Auston shushed him softly. 

“I’ll still love you, too, as long as you love me back. I’m not gonna stop loving you, not because of any reason given from some homophobic asshole we have to call our coach,” Auston said with conviction, and Mitch tightened his hold on Auston’s upper body. 

“Promise?” Mitch murmured, and he beamed his eyes up towards Auston. The big, greenish blue, begging and pleading, innocent and goofy pair of eyes that Auston could stare into forever. 

“Of course, babe, of course. I promise, I promise a thousand times.” Auston kissed his forehead, his peak of his nose, his cheeks and then his lips. Gentle, small kisses that just designated how seriously Auston had meant what he said. 

“I really do love you, I really do. Like, thank you so much. For just-' for being you and being so good to me and being just-- I love you.” Mitch smiled again, kissing all over Auston’s face and giggling in pure enjoyment.


End file.
